Will Ferrell, Stephen King and the New Influencer Class

Cindy Ratzlaff

Aug. 25, 2011, 1:25 PM

Got Klout?

If you don't know your Klout score yet, you'd be wise to find out. As more agency heads, marketing VP's, celebrity publicists and advertisers look for an edge in creating buzz about their clients and products, they're increasingly seeking some metric to effectively measure an influencers, well, influence.

Your Klout Score is part of your personal brand.

For more than a year, the socially savvy have been aware of Klout-based invitations to special parties at big conferences such as BlogWorld, and advance previews for movies and new products.

This week both Will Ferrell's FunnyOrDie video website and Mile 81 (Scribner, $2.99/eBook), Stephen King's new eBook-only launch partnered with web influence researcher, Klout.com to identify and reach out to influential social media users as a key component in their marketing push.

Scribner, an imprint of the New York City based parent company Simon & Schuster, teamed up with Klout.com, a privately held San Francisco firm that measures social influence and assigns an index, to choose 1,000 highly influential users to preview New York Times bestselling author Stephen King's new original short story, which is being released in e-book form only. The lucky 1,000 are being offered free access to the book one week before it goes on sale to the general public.

As agency executives, marketing V.P.'s and celebrity publicists look for an edge in reaching the social influential, Klout.com provides an aggregated measurement score that includes, among other things, a person's reach, influence, audience and areas of influence.

Klout declined to provide an actual minimum score for the 1,000 socially savvy influencers chosen to preview Mile 81, saying they target a combination of score and topics on which a person is considered influential. A representative from Scribner was unavailable for comment at press time. Rob Goodman, Director of Online Marketing for Simon & Schuster, Inc., was responsible for putting together the deal with Klout.com.